NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Owners Reporting Bricked Cards During Diablo IV Closed Beta Play Sessions

[T0@st]

A combination of the Diablo IV Closed Beta and NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti graphics card is proving lethal for the latter - community feedback has alerted Blizzard to take action, and they will be investigating the issue in the coming days, with assistance from NVIDIA. It is speculated that the game is exposing underlying hardware faults within an affected card, but it is odd that a specific model is generating the largest number of issues. Unlucky 3080 Ti owners participating in the closed beta are said to be experiencing unpleasant or inconsistent in-game performance at best, and BSODs followed by non-functional GPUs at worst.

A Blizzard forumite, ForANge, chimed in with their experience: "My graphics card also burned out. While playing, the fans of my Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 Ti suddenly started running at maximum speed. At the same time, the signal from the monitor disappeared. After turning off the power and trying to turn it back on, I couldn't get it to work anymore. The card is just under a year old. It happened during a cutscene with flowers when they showed a snowy landscape."




Sulfate had a similar encounter with their card, albeit with a slightly more explosive effect: "I got to the Church where the flashback scene plays, then fans on my GPU went to max, all three monitors went black and I then killed the power. Smelled that burnt electronics smell. Waited a bit then tried to power back on, and monitors stayed black. After (waiting) a bit (I) killed power, popped open my case tried to power back on. Motherboard has post error lights and shows a solid white, which means error with video card. My Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is dead in the water."

The Blizzard team has posted a message in the thread, and it offers advice for those affected:

"If your card is still not working, try these troubleshooting steps:

• Conduct a complete power cycle (AC OFF->AC ON) and see if GPU can be detected under Windows.
• If GPU can be found under Windows, do a clean driver install.
• If that doesn't work, please reply and include the following information or logs:

1) GPU card vendor and model number
2) Display resolution when running Diablo IV
3) Display mode (Windowed/Windowed Fullscreen/Fullscreen)
4) Max Foreground FPS, Max Background FPS
5) Diablo IV graphic quality settings, preset with Low/Medium/High. Or more detail with custom settings."



The New World, an MMO produced by Amazon Games, gained unwanted notoriety for its apparent ability to kill the mighty RTX 3090 back in mid-2021. Blizzard fans with long memories are also recalling that Starcraft 2 was rumored to be a GPU slayer, roughly around the time of the game's launch. There is early talk of the Diablo IV Beta defaulting to an uncapped frame rate setting, which may send the graphics card into peak performance mode and draw unusually high volumes of power. Community members are suggesting that it is best to cap frame rates via the in-game menu, and to double-check whether the Max Frame Rate setting is disabled within NVIDIA's Control Panel.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Thanks for the post. Even though we have been talking about it in the forums I'm glad an official news post has been made will go a long way to make this issue more visible.

 

[Steevo]

To be fair, if this happened to an AMD card the fanbois would be all over AMD for making cheap crap. But since its Nvidia lets blame the game.

 

[PerfectWave]

Nvidia cards bricks a lot nothing new.
High price and cheap components

 

[redeye]

well it was released on june 3, 2021. lucky for european owners. that 2 year mandatory warranty should cover you.

 

[PerfectWave]

maybe you can get 4090ti instead LUL

 

[dinmaster]

Remember all those problems when the 3080/3090 came out and they had issues with overheating, bad back of gpu voltage controllers being too cheap from some manufacturers etc. This is highlighting that problem again, not everyone experienced it because they haven't pushed their cards as hard until now. This game is no joke when using the full gpu to run the game. I have a 3080 ultra gaming and it handles the game like a champ but i bought it knowing EVGA used better cooling and better voltage regulators on the back.

This is not the games fault by any means! this is the manufacturers problem using insufficient quality controllers and/or cooler. Nvidia could be to blame here as well because they specify the specs and what is needed to cool etc for the different partners. Reminds me of the fermi days a little. Again not the games fault.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

well it was released on june 3, 2021. lucky for european owners. that 2 year mandatory warranty should cover you.

I still have 438 days left on my EVGA FTW3 3080ti..... Purchased June 4th 2021. When I looked back the other day to when I purchased it I was kinda surprised it had almost been 2 years. Time flys already replaced it with a 4090 though in the main rig I wonder how long it will be till we get similar stories about them....

 

[Gucky]

well it was released on june 3, 2021. lucky for european owners. that 2 year mandatory warranty should cover you.

Only the first year is covered no questions asked. At the second year you have to prove, that the card was faulty. If you used OC (and told them that), they might not cover it under warrenty.

 

[Slizzo]

To be fair, if this happened to an AMD card the fanbois would be all over AMD for making cheap crap. But since its Nvidia lets blame the game.

SO, you mean the RX 7900XT/RX 7900XTX reference coolers having bad batches and burning up cards just never happened and was never reported ad-nauseum?

And the 12vHPWR adapter "issues" were never blamed on NVIDIA? Nor the New World issue that was mentioned in the news post that affected EVGA cards, mainly?

 

[Vya Domus]

To be fair, if this happened to an AMD card the fanbois would be all over AMD for making cheap crap. But since its Nvidia lets blame the game.

As I understand it's because of some component that Gigabyte chose to use which is according to Nvidia reference specification. I guess it's on both Nvidia and AIB but yes AMD would be put on blast brutally if this were to happen to them.

SO, you mean the RX 7900XT/RX 7900XTX reference coolers having bad batches and burning up cards just never happened and was never reported ad-nauseum?

Look up RTX 4090 and hotspot temperature issues, you'll find plenty of people reporting that their 4090s were hitting 100C+ hotspot but these issues were never brought in the attention of the wider public. I think one has to be willfully ignorant to not admit that Nvidia is often given way more leeway for similar problems that happen on AMD.

 

[razaron]

I wonder what proportion of these are ex-mining GPUs?

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Did I miss the space invaders issue from I guess nvidia drivers bricking cards think that was 20 series wasn't it ?

 

[redeye]

well it was released on june 3, 2021. lucky for european owners. that 2 year mandatory warranty should cover you.

Only the first year is covered no questions asked. At the second year you have to prove, that the card was faulty. If you used OC (and told them that), they might not cover it under warrenty.

nvidia goes to great lengths to prevent you from overclocking too much. (thus this is nvidia’s fault) they limit the power limit etc. throttle the clock rate… in techpowerup reviews they show the effort nvidia goes to throttle the gpu, limit the temperature etc…
so even if the card was overclocked, nvidia has made an effort to “stop” too high overclocks… (when is a last time afterburner, ”released the magic smoke”, lol, or burned an nvidia card. the fact that nvidia limits the clock rate/power limit… means they “approve” of software overclocks… so i still think that mandatory warranty would cover it.

also, if you card is bricked by a game, how is nvidia going to know if you overclocked it?

 

[R-T-B]

I wonder what proportion of these are ex-mining GPUs?

Not any of statistical significance.

As we discussed on the older thread, the issue seems to be a bad vrm controller paired with a asymetric gpu vrm config. Affected gpus include some gigabyte 3080/tis and one limited batch of EVGA 3090s (yes the same ones that died in New World beta).

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

As I understand it's because of some component that Gigabyte chose to use which is according to Nvidia reference specification. I guess it's on both Nvidia and AIB but yes AMD would be put on blast brutally if this were to happen to them.

And nvidia was put on blast when this happened with new world, but selective memory helps to craft a narrative I guess.

Look up RTX 4090 and hotspot temperature issues, you'll find plenty of people reporting that their 4090s were hitting 100C+ hotspot but these issues were never brought in the attention of the wider public. I think one has to be willfully ignorant to not admit that Nvidia is often given way more leeway for similar problems that happen on AMD.

View attachment 289028

A bad cooler from a third party is a completely different matter then the first party OEM solution being faulty. When EVGA cheaper out on their coolers for the RTX 2000s they were also put on blast and force dot issue an apology and a free fix for their cards, but again, this goes against the narrative of AMD being the victim.

People always have to pull out the whataboutisms and red herrings to prove their precious AMD gets bullied, because mindshare or some such nonsense.

Hi,
Did I miss the space invaders issue from I guess nvidia drivers bricking cards think that was 20 series wasn't it ?

It wasnt nvidia drivers, no idea WTAF you are going on about there.

The space invaders issue was a problem stemming from early batches of GDDR6 having overheating issues. It was limited to the 20 series and appears to have been fixed before ampere's launch, as later 2000s and lower end 3000s do not have this issue.

 

[Dirt Chip]

The game is too vicious for the NV card..

 

[N/A]

Obviously the cut scenes are the ones being too inconvenient. 1000 FPS creating some transient excursions in the vrm circuit.

 

[Hyderz]

Jensen Huang : Yo Blizzard bro we need to sell more gpus.
Blizzard Ent : Say no more fam

 

[bonehead123]

Well, the legal community should be gettin some enormous boners while drooling over this.... and probably placing moar orders as we speak for moar new yachts, beach houses, maserati's etc ect....

 

[raptori]

There is no way the problem is related to 3080Ti in general !! there must be specific factors, I can imagine the brand and the quality of its manufacturing is the main factor to consider.

 

[ThrashZone]

It wasnt nvidia drivers, no idea WTAF you are going on about there.

Hi,
So you get triggered at me for saying " I guess nvidia drivers bricking cards" dude it was just what I stated "Guessing" so relax dude you'll give yourself a stoke

Point really was nvidia has had at least two questionable series so far 20 & 30 jury still out on 40.

 

[evernessince]

Always stress test your new GPU. Can't tell you how many systems I've had to repair where people used faulty parts that work fine until you really stress them only to find out after they are outside warranty.

Luckily most 3000 series cards are still in warranty.

 

[MarsM4N]

Where have I heared that before? Ohh yea, here we go:

New World: Bricked GPU Causes and How to Prevent Them

Is New World still bricking high-end GPUs? Here's what you need to know about this problem.

www.denofgeek.com

Quote:

"Shortly thereafter, GPU manufacturer EVGA confirmed that some of the bricked GPUs they received from New World players were actually at least partially caused by manufacturing issues related to the smoldering process."

"At the moment, the EVGA RTX 3090 FTW Ultra and Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti seem to be the two GPU models most commonly affected by this issue. That being said, RTX 3090, RTX 3080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 3060 Ti, and RTX 3000 laptop users have all reported having their GPUs bricked while playing New World. That’s not necessarily a comprehensive list of GPUs that have been affected so far, but as you can see, it does sound like higher-end RTX cards are at greater risk of failure at this time."

"First off, as noted above, EVGA has already admitted to hardware problems with some of their GPUs that were contributing to this issue, so we can’t rule out the possibility that many of the bricked GPUs reported so far may have simply been defective. If that is the case, then you could argue that New World is exasperating the issue rather than outright bricking otherwise perfect GPUs."

As forums aren't flooded with reports it's most likely a limited batch of cards with manufacturing issues. Bad apples dying under stress. Or Nvidia is pushing their high end cards too far.

 

[chrcoluk]

Ultimately manufacturer's fault, but I do also think uncapped framerate on menu's is dumb design.

Was offered trial of this game as a Virgin Media customer, feels like I dodged a bullet now.